Soliloquy
by scangel72
Summary: After the war is over and five years of marriage, Ginny makes a decision about her life with Harry.


Disclaimer: Of course none of the characters belong to me. All JKR's. Also, I wrote this without a beta, so be kind if you find something glaringly wrong that I missed.   
  
Soliloquy  
  
I walk around this grand, pretentious mausoleum of a home that has never really been a home and I wonder how I got here. Oh, I know how, but… Sometimes I wonder if I've slept through the last fifteen years of my life. I was ten years old the first time I saw him and it was as if he were surrounded by a glow. And that was before I really knew who he was.   
  
Now I know.   
  
I walk into the one room in the house that is mine. It is a showplace of tastefully chosen antiques mixed with more modern pieces, all tied together with an incredibly expensive decorator's taste. I certainly never could have put something together like the rest of the house. I snort softly. After all, I thought the Burrow was lovely. I still do.   
  
My 'study' as I call it is a mish-mash of… everything. My old quidditch uniform hangs on my old boom leaning in the corner. Bookshelves are crammed full, most of the books and magazines shoved in haphazardly. I still have most of my old school textbooks. A squashy armchair with a wrinkled slipcover sits under the window. It has seen better days. The chair, not the window. The house itself is immaculate in every way. Nothing short of perfection would do for the Boy-Who-Lived, now the Man-Who-Conquered. A desk sits on the other side of the room, scattered with mail and owl treats. Letters received, replies in progress and… little of it holding truth.   
  
I sigh and sink down into the worn armchair, taking stock of my life. Pictures of days gone by haunt me, younger, happier faces waving at me from too many frames to count. Well, my face was happier there, at least. Many of the others are gone now. And those that are left feel like they're living in a blessed time. I suppose they are, in truth. But I cannot drag myself out of this dark place to join in their happiness.   
  
You see, the truth has finally caught me in the grip of its relentless jaws, leaving me stripped bare. As a child, I loved him. As a girl just finding womanhood, I loved him. As a woman full grown, I still love him. Yet I am alone. More alone than I could have ever dreamed.   
  
I push up from the chair and move to stare out the windows to the beautifully manicured lawns. My arms wrap around myself as I shiver, cold despite the warmth of the summer afternoon. I let my mind drift to years gone by…  
  
It was the summer after my fifth year that he finally noticed me. Really noticed me. Not Bill, Charlie, Fred, George and Ron's little sister. But me. Ginny. I can still remember the smells in the garden when we talked away hours, much to Ron's irritation. Of course, Hermione kept him well-occupied most of the time. I smirk at the thought, the memory a happy one.   
  
As is the memory of that first kiss. We'd come close a few times, but that night he'd finally gotten over his shyness and pulled me close. It was sloppy and clumsy and embarrassing and so beautiful that it still brings tears to my eyes. I remember the way he looked at me, like I was the sun and the moon and the stars all it once. It nearly stopped my heart beating.   
  
That summer was… idyllic. In truth so was the year following. We talked about everything. Even things he didn't discuss with Ron and Hermione, which was saying something. He poured out his heart, trusting me beyond anyone else. I knew him inside and out. I thought he knew me as well. Now I question that.   
  
I shake myself and focus on the memories again, losing track of time as the morning fades. I often wonder if I hadn't lost myself in him all those years ago, how things would have turned out. Am I completely arrogant in thinking I gave him power in knowing that he was loved as he'd always wanted to be? Not as someone to be pitied for the cruelties he'd suffered, as someone's son's friend, as the deliverer, but loved simply because he was himself; a boy verging on manhood. Maybe I am arrogant.   
  
But still, despite the shadow of Voldemort, my sixth year was a dream. He never fawned—that's not in his nature—but he was… I can't even put my finger on it, really. He was just… in love.   
  
I swallow hard at the memory, fighting back tears. God, how I loved him. Enough that I let a celebratory snog after his NEWTs were done turn into something more than I had intended. We both lost our virginity that night. It was much like the first kiss, I think with a bit of a smile. Clumsy and a bit embarrassing, but burned into my memory for all time. My smile turns into a chuckle. He took to sex with almost as much intensity as quidditch. Hermione was more than a bit scandalized by all the contraceptus potion she had to brew for me that summer. It was incredible, though.   
  
The next year had been hard. We struggled to get used to the separation since I was still in school and he was being trained by the Order. No 'ordinary' Auror training for him, Dumbledore decreed. The skirmishes with Voldemort were increasing in frequency and no one knew when the final attack would come. We only knew we were living on borrowed time until then.   
  
I hold my left hand out in front of me and look down at the rings on my finger. The ostentatiously large solitaire still makes me blush, but I can't help loving it. He shocked me and everyone else by getting down on one knee at my graduation and asking me to marry him. I remember my mother crying and my father and Dumbledore patting each other on the back. Truthfully, though, those are all just peripherals. What I really remember was wondering what I'd done to be so blessed as to have all my dreams come true.   
  
Maybe I'd have done things different had I known how it would all turn out.   
  
Dumbledore married us in a huge ceremony at Hogwarts right before the fall term. It was incredible and sumptuous in the extreme. Nothing was too good for the Boy-Who-Lived. Looking back, no longer ashamed of my cynicism, I wonder if it was a dare to him. Voldemort. At the time, I was so caught up in being love, being his bride, that it didn't occur to me. Now… I shrug. Nothing was sacred other than the cause. I understand it now, but it doesn't mean I have to like the way it affected me at the time.   
  
I look down at my rings again and in an impulsive moment, take them off. The white marks around my finger where the sun hasn't reached my skin enthralls me. Even without the symbols, I'm still his. Part of me wants to fling the rings across the room and scream. Another part of me just wants to sob like a child. In the end, all I do is put them back on.   
  
A cold cup of tea sits on my desk. I sit down behind it and pick it up, sipping from it anyway. It is only an illusion to make my hands feel busy. An illusion. Like my marriage. My life. When did it change?  
  
I set the cup back down with a clatter, my hands shaking. Trying to still them, I bury them in my hair as I lean forward, my elbows braced on the desk. This is what I have been avoiding for more than a year now. Wondering when and why and how I lost myself.   
  
In all honesty, I'm fairly certain I lost myself the first time he told me he loved me. When I look back, I realize that for every crumb from his table that he gave, I turned myself inside out. He needed me, so I gave. He needed my unquestioning support and if I gave more than he did, well… my time would come. Wouldn't it? One day, the powers that be willing, the war would be over and we could be… normal. He could take care of me like I'd long taken care of him.   
  
But that's not how it happened. Three years ago he stood face to face with the Dark Lord and won. The price was high and so many were lost, but in the end, we won. Charlie and Percy are gone. My father won't ever walk again. No magic exists to give Ron back his sight and nothing can quell the grief Hermione feels when she faces the fact that he'll never know what their children look like.   
  
We survived, though, where many did not. And yet, when all is said and done, I can not bring myself to rejoice, because somewhere along the way, I lost my heart and my soul. I just didn't realize it right away.   
  
At first, we were all caught up in the joy of the end, even in our grief. We went for months on the high of knowing that it was over. And I thought it was finally going to be my time. But then he was once again pulled in. Now they needed him to help track down the minions that had escaped. No one was willing to risk a repeat performance of the last twenty five years. I could understand that. It never ended, though. When one task was finished, another was desperately important. Everything was horribly, bloody important.   
  
So I was relegated to being the wife of the Savior.   
  
I lift up my head and smile wryly at nothing in particular. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of women that would give their very lifeblood for that position. What they don't know is the hell of knowing what it was like to be loved by him once, but now…   
  
I push away from the desk to pace the room. Noon has passed as I've lost myself in the times gone by. It is time to face the here and now, though. The present. In the present, I don't know that my husband loves me. I feel that I am little more than a doll for him to dress up and present to the world. The perfect life, the perfect house, the perfect wife. Window dressing. That's all the substance that is left. My time never came. I doubt that it will.   
  
Don't get me wrong, this isn't about me wallowing in self-pity. I've done it and gotten over it. Now… it is about what I can live with. Do I let my eyes glaze over and become the pretty doll? Or do I swallow the pain and walk away to learn who Virginia is? A long time ago I would have pummeled myself for allowing it to get to this point. I would have sworn that as much as I loved him, I'd never lose myself.   
  
But I am lost. I knew it when the passion drained away and the lovemaking became sex because of habit. I knew it when he stopped worrying that I'd be upset when he didn't make it home until I was asleep. I knew it when he began throwing expensive gifts at me as if they'd make up for the lack of him.   
  
I walk through the house once again, letting myself touch the little things here and there that mean something to me.   
  
Even in my own mind, I have to be faithful and admit that he's still as honorable as he was as a boy. Despite my thoughts earlier, I'm fairly certain he still loves me in an absentminded sort of way. And through it all, I've never had any doubts about his fidelity. At least as far as other women. No, in truth, he was seduced. Seduced by being openly adored and petted; needed by the many. Being needed by the one—me—just wasn't enough to counteract the rest.   
  
I find myself in our bedroom, leaning against the post of the massive bed we've shared for five years now. A bed where I held him through nightmares; horrific images that left him screaming in the dark. A bed where we cried together over the losses. A bed that I'd hoped would see the conception of our children. But children aren't on his radar yet. And children are just one more thing I'm tired of waiting and hoping for. I used to berate myself for my selfishness, telling myself that he was needed by so many.   
  
The many be damned. I needed him. I tried to tell him, but he always trotted out that trademark grin, seduced me sweetly and put away my concerns. I can not do it one more day longer.   
  
My suitcases are packed and lined up neatly near the foot of the bed. I only hesitate long enough to run my hand over his pillow. A pillow that hasn't been slept on in two nights. It is time.   
  
I pause once again in the entry hall as an anonymous driver who has no knowledge of my world puts my things into a car. He'll drive me to an airport where I'll take my first 'flight'. Ironic. I'm taking flight in more ways than one. But this is not a ploy to force his hand. I need time to figure out who I am. I know he'll come looking and avoiding magic is the only way I can think of to keep myself secret for a time.   
  
I have to know myself before I can face him again, because you see, whatever happens, I'll love him with every fiber of my being until the day I die. That doesn't mean we can make this work, though. You see, even though he's been with me all this time, I've been alone all along. I haven't even really had myself for company.   
  
I take a cream colored envelope out of my jacket pocket and look at it for a moment. God, this hurts. I look up and study my reflection in the mirror of the hall table. I see a woman I just don't know. But I want to know her.   
  
With a deep breath, I prop the letter up against the mirror where he'll see it. And then on impulse, before I can talk myself out of it, I twist my rings off once again and leave them in front of the envelope with his name scrawled across the front.   
  
I step out the front door and shut it behind me, walking down the stone steps to the open door of the waiting car. As I step in, I look over the place I used to call home.   
  
"Goodbye Harry," I murmur, finally allowing the tears to come.   
  
A/N: Well, this was a strange one for me, because I'm not hugely into the Harry/Ginny dynamic for the most part, but I got this plot bunny in my head after falling in love with 'My Immortal' by Evanescence. It just seemed perfect.   
  
I will note that I've left this story a bit open ended. I don't necessarily have plans to make this more than a one-shot, but if I get lots of feedback (reviews!) I might consider it. And I'm not blackmailing, really! The muse hasn't given me more than this one vignette at this point. I just thought she might be more interested if she knew others wanted the rest of the story, whatever it may be! 


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